Moving towards its destiny

Saeed Anwar

Saeed Anwar (Urdu: سعید انور; born September 6, 1968 in Karachi, Sind) is a former Pakistani left-handed opening batsmanand ocasional Slow left arm orthodox bowler who played international cricket between 1989 and 2003. He played 55Test matches scoring 4052 with the help of eleven centuries while in 247 One Day Internationals (ODIs) he made 8824 runs. He made twenty centuries in ODIs which are the most than any other pakistani batsman in the format.

In February 1999, Anwar became the third Pakistani to carry his batthrough a Test innnings, following father and sonNazar Mohammed andMudassar Nazar. He scored 188 not out – single-handedly beating his team’s previous innings (185), when he mad a duck, and contributing 60 per cent of a total of 316. It was also the highest Test score by a Pakistani on Indian soil which was surpassed by Younis Khan (267) in 2005. He is most notable for scoring 194 runs against India in Chennai in 1997, then the highest, and now the joint third highest individual score in a ODI.

Anwar (194) and Charles Coventry (194*) shared the record for highest individual score in an ODI match until it was overtaken by India’s Sachin Tendulkar (200*) against South Africa cricket team on 24 February 2010 andVirender Sehwag’s 219 against West Indies on 8 December 2011 at Indore. Anwar has scored two or more successive hundreds on four occasions. He holds the highest Test batting average (59.06) of any Pakistani against Australia in Test matches, and made 20 hundreds in One Day Internationals as a Pakistan opening batsman.